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Air Force One, its windows blacked out to guard against attack, touched down in Afghanistan well after dark.

President Obamas war-zone visits are usually short and ceremonial. In his six hours on the ground, he appeared alongside Afghanistans leader, pinned Purple Hearts on the wounded and spoke to a hangar full of U.S. troops.

But Obama also made time for something else, something personal. Just after 2 a.m., the president slipped away for a meeting that he had deliberately kept off his public schedule.

In a small, private room, 15 mortuary affairs soldiers waited to greet him. These were the soldiers who prepared the bodies of troops killed in battle for their trip home. To blunt the overpowering stench of death, they wore masks when they worked, burned their uniforms regularly and dabbed Vicks VapoRub under their noses.

Now that they were about to meet Obama, members of a unit used to working in the isolation of wars grim aftermath all had the same question: Of all the soldiers in Afghanistan, why had the president asked to see them?

Obamas visit came in the spring of 2012, just months before his election to a second term, in which he had promised to speed Americas exit from its post-9/11 wars. Since then, a new war has erupted, while an old war continues. Today, the president faces mounting pressure to send more troops to Iraq to help in the battle against Islamic State extremists.

His decision will be influenced by the counsel of his generals. It will also be guided by more private moments in his wartime education at the bedside of wounded troops; on the tarmac of Dover Air Force Base, where the war dead return to American soil; and in that small room with the mortuary affairs soldiers one middle of the night in Afghanistan.

Discussions of war and peace in Washington often revolve around abstract questions of policy and national interest. Rarely mentioned are the human costs of war and how they weigh on a commander in chief. Its probably the least appreciated and most difficult part of leadership, said Michele Flournoy, who served at the top levels of Obamas Pentagon. Its not an abstraction, and, if you have any doubt, it eats at you, because the human costs are very real.

Every president experiences war differently. Some become consumed with its politics and special ability to unravel prized domestic agendas. Others see in war an opportunity to reshape the world, build a legacy, deter future enemies.

As a wartime commander, Obama has often focused his words on wars tragedies and his actions on ratcheting down risks to troops. We believe it is a national security objective not to be losing service members in wars, said Ben Rhodes, the presidents deputy national security adviser for strategic communications.

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Private moments helped shape Obamas education about war